Sir Keir and the Lowerarchy

Having an idea there is a whiff of sulphur surrounding the Keir Starmer government, I recently reread The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis.


In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis imagines a series of lessons on the importance of taking a deliberate role in Christian faith by portraying a typical human life, with all its temptations and failings, seen from devils' viewpoints. Screwtape holds an administrative post in the bureaucracy ("Lowerarchy") of Hell. Until the book's final pages, Screwtape acts as a mentor to his nephew Wormwood, an inexperienced and incompetent tempter.


After Wormwood’s failure as a trainee tempter, it is easy to imagine how other Lowerarchy tempters may have been far more successful. The effect of Screwtape's crafty guidance is easily seen in political life today, Sir Keir Starmer being just one of his many successes.


Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" of "false", but as "academic" or "practical", "outworn" or "contemporary", "conventional" or "ruthless". Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church...

If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don't let him get away from that invaluable "real life". But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is "the results of modern investigation"...

Aggravate that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself ,which are perfectly clear to anyone who has over lived in the same house with him or worked the same office.

C. S. Lewis - The Screwtape Letters (1942)